


You and You and Nothing But You

by salamoonder



Series: don't kiss me goodbye again [1]
Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Anachronistic, F/F, Missing Scene, Multi, Other, Panic Attacks, Suicidal Thoughts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-02
Updated: 2020-12-02
Packaged: 2021-03-10 06:28:43
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,413
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27829726
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/salamoonder/pseuds/salamoonder
Summary: Yasha has been here before.She's been here before in her dreams and in her life and in the slow-crash, disaster zone thoughts she entertains in the privacy of her own mind at her lowest moments.It's getting harder to tell Molly and Zuala apart in her memories.
Relationships: Mollymauk Tealeaf/Yasha, Yasha/Zuala (Critical Role)
Series: don't kiss me goodbye again [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2036866
Comments: 8
Kudos: 33





	You and You and Nothing But You

**Author's Note:**

> Part one of three. Read at your own risk; there are characters and triggers that I've left untagged to avoid spoilers, although I think I've tagged most of the big nonspoiler ones. Depending on your point of view and how sad you want to make this, the title is taken either from "I Can Do Better Than That" or from "See I'm Smiling", both from The Last Five Years. Series title is taken from "Goodbye Until Tomorrow/I Could Never Rescue You" from the same.
> 
> I know I've tagged this as Yasha/Molly but their relationship is....complicated. I'm not sure I would characterize it solely or fully as romantic, sexual or platonic--there's a lot of greyace and queerplatonic themes here.

It’s supposed to be her.

It’s supposed to be her in that grave, but it’s not, and what even is the point anymore--

Stop. Stop, think, Yasha, _think_ \--of course there is a point because there has to be a point, otherwise…(otherwise what? she thinks. Otherwise you’ll be a cowardly, pointless waste of life, _again?)_

Molly would say that the whole point is that there doesn’t need to be a point; that things can just be. She wonders if he’d say that about his own death--and then realizes bitterly that he probably did. Those were probably some of his last thoughts, alone with an enemy and soaked in blood. This can just be. This can be it.

Only he’s _wrong,_ actually, because it’s _always supposed to have been her--because she allowed this to happen--because she wasn’t strong enough--because--because--_

Okay, Yasha. Time to move on. Time to leave.

Leave like you always do.

♡ ♡ ♡

The thing is--okay, so, the thing is, it’s actually Molly’s fault that she’s still here at all. And isn’t it exactly like him, to send her careening haphazardly along a path, and then leave her to it. She can see his shit-eating grin, her metaphor mixing with a memory of him at a marketplace they’d passed through once, balancing a squawking hen in his hands. She watches him let go, thrusting his hands upwards, and amongst the loud and frantic complaints of the seller and the panicked screeching of the chicken, there’s a low sound that she thinks might be a chuckle. Down feathers thicken the air for a second and Yasha flutters them away from her face lazily with the back of her hand. Molly’s still grinning at her, tongue poking out from between his fangs as the seller continues to berate him.

“Well,” Yasha says drily, “You certainly seem to be enjoying yourself.”

Molly just winks at her. She has to smother a giggle. Even back then--even before he got his voice back--it was like he had too much to say. It came bursting out of every corner of him, clearer than words ever could, his eyes sparkling and his arm flung wide, as if to say, isn’t this fun? Isn’t the world funny?

And Yasha wishes she could laugh with him, but--well, it’s still too soon. To find the world funny. A few months ago the world was never supposed to be funny again, but now she might allow it. Someday. _Someday_. And curse Molly for giving that to her, honestly. Bastard.

He smiles at her like he knows--like he knows he saved her life. (He shouldn’t, really. She’s never going to tell him.) But it would make sense, that he looks at her like he’s not bullshitting for once. That he should fling her back into this new life, as ill prepared as an underfed chicken at market, flying haplessly through the air towards someone’s cheese display.

Wouldn’t it be just like Molly, to accidentally unearth secrets he’s pretending to know.

♡ ♡ ♡

At some point months later, Yasha wakes up to footsteps outside and the rustle of fabric as her tent flap opens. A few moments later she feels the blankets shift around her as Molly crawls in beside her, and then all is silent again for a few seconds. Until Molly ducks his head under the duvet and starts crying his eyes out.

It’s a small cot anyway but she shifts closer to him and puts a hand on his back to pull him into her as he sobs, and she whispers a silent prayer to the Stormlord. A thanks, for allowing him to heal to the extent that he can feel at all.

“What’s wrong, Mollymauk?” she asks, but he just shakes his head and cries harder, and she strokes her hand over his horns, weathering it, waiting. Tieflings run hot, she’s discovered, and she’s a little worried he’ll work himself into a fever, but it’s not new.

None of this is new. It’s just...repackaged.

She lets him go for a good bit, and when he shows no sign of calming, she wraps him in the duvet and holds him so tight to her chest that she’s a little scared she’ll suffocate him.

“Please,” she says, “please.” She’s not entirely sure what she’s asking for. “Molly? You’re going to cry yourself sick.”

♡ ♡ ♡

The first time they can get Molly to say anything besides “empty”, a look of horrible comprehension comes over his face, and he cries so hard he throws up. Yasha hasn’t forgotten.

♡ ♡ ♡

“I’m not...I don’t know what this is,” says Yasha, not without tenderness. “but I lost m- I lost. I.”

♡ ♡ ♡

There had been a bird with a broken wing struggling to hop along the ground, beside the blackened road out of Xhorhas. It was the first living thing that Yasha was pretty sure she hated.

♡ ♡ ♡

“Her name was Zuala,” Yasha tells him. “ _Zuala_ ,” she repeats, as if to herself. And Molly breathes.

“Zuala Zuala Zuala,” Yasha whisper chants, and Molly hiccups.

“Maybe they wouldn’t have killed her, if I had been...been louder,” she says. “Maybe if I...oh, I don’t know.”

♡ ♡ ♡

It is not _fair_ that Molly chose her.

She was _ready_ to give up. She was so close to it, like falling towards something unexpectedly bigger than herself, like those dreams where the stars are down instead of up and you can breathe only so long as you think about breathing. She was just steady enough to topple spectacularly.

♡ ♡ ♡

“Here,” Zuala says, her voice hushed. Yasha has to smother a giggle as Zuala’s hands whisper across her thigh, securing the book she was carrying in the pouch strapped to Yasha’s leg. 

“Everything is flirting to you.”

“Are you trying to tell me that everything you do isn’t flirting?”

Zuala looks up, a grin teasing at the edge of her lips. “Dearest, what have I ever done that _isn’t_ flirting? I live and _breathe_ to flirt. I am _the_ flirt.”

Yasha sucks in a sudden breath, eyes catching on the teasing laughter in Zuala’s eyes. She’s not, not really, but she does so love to play. “You’re going to get in so much trouble,” she murmurs.

♡ ♡ ♡

“Loss is preventable!” Yasha screams. “Loss...is _reversible_.”

♡ ♡ ♡

It takes ages to get to Nicodranas by herself. When she starts, she’s not actually _getting to Nicodranas._

She’s just getting away. Away from Molly and away from Zuala and away from every death and every injustice that has ever been her fault.

♡ ♡ ♡

“Gods,” Yasha whispers. “What a mess.”

“You’re not wrong,” says Gustav darkly. “It may be better if we just…” He draws a finger across his throat, and Yasha winces in spite of herself.

“Is he breathing?” comes a tiny, scratchy voice from the shadows, and Yasha watches Gustav’s face soften.

“Yes, Toya, he’s breathing. Why don’t you go outside with Kylrie?”

“I want to watch,” says Toya, quiet but firm. “I can handle it. I’ll be good.”

“I’m sure you can, but...this may take a while.”

“I won’t get bored.”

Gustav sighs hard through his nose. “You can watch,” he says simply, and Yasha sees the shadow in the corner smile. Gustav starts towards the body lying on the cot that Bo had dragged in, but Yasha puts an arm out to stop him, half surprised at herself. Gustav says nothing, just raises an eyebrow at her.

“Maybe--let me try something,” she says tightly. “Maybe it won’t take a while.”

Gustav backs away to give her space, hands raised in mock surrender.

Yasha starts carefully towards the--the tiefling ( _not corpse_ , she reminds herself firmly) flung out in front of her, prepared to see some massive laceration or awful rash, and is surprised to find, for the most part, no visible damage. There are some scratches, sure, but the worst thing is just that he’s absolutely covered in dirt and mud, filthier than any creature that Yasha has ever encountered before. There’s dirt in his nostrils and streaked through his hair and clinging stubbornly to his horns. He smells like a recently tilled garden. Yasha wrinkles her nose in spite of herself. Not for the first time, she wonders what the hell Bo has been doing with his nights, to come home with people like this.

She takes a quick glance around the tent before she lays both hands on his bare chest. Gustav, watching her curiously but not with any wariness. Toya, eyes too big for her face, taking it all in. Bo, sprawled in the grass, arms crossed, knees up, eyes closed. Snoring softly. She takes a deep, slow breath. Hopefully she remembers how to do this.

Yasha doesn’t make magic happen so much as magic happens to her. As soon as she touches his skin she can feel his body aching for healing, for warmth, for anything. His skin is cold beneath her palms, which are starting to warm unnaturally--or rather, supernaturally--as the life force drains a little from herself, sucked into the vacuum lying before her. His chest convulses under her hands and she takes an involuntary step back, raising her hands to restrain him by the shoulders if necessary, but he’s coughing too weakly to even raise his head.

“ _Whoa,_ ” Toya manages from the corner, and Yasha winces.

“I don’t like to show it off,” she says, watching the tiefling cough up clumps of dirt and mud. “Easy.”

She’s not sure if he can hear her--he hasn’t even opened his eyes yet--but she’s at something of a loss as to what to say otherwise. She looks back at Gustav, but his eyes are fixed on the tiefling. “Can you speak, friend?”

The tiefling seems to come awake in a way that he hadn’t before, eyes focusing with some clarity on Gustav, and then flickering to Yasha, sudden panic in his expression, mud smeared across his lips.

“Empty,” he whispers, and Yasha looks into the blank red stare and feels fear grip her heart. “Empty, empty, empty--”

“ _Okay,”_ says Yasha. “Alright, stop--just stop it.”

The tiefling’s lips curl into a snarl, and Yasha doesn’t quite realize why until Gustav gently clears his throat behind her. “Yasha,” he says softly. Warningly.

She looks down, and finds her hands clamped around the tiefling’s wrists, vicelike, finds that that snarl is inches from her face, as she’s pulled him upright to--to something. To get him to stop. She can’t stand it.

She drops his wrists, horrified, and backs all the way over to Gustav, sparing a somewhat shamed look at Toya. The little one doesn’t seem to be fazed or afraid, just...interested. “I’m sorry,” she says, at a loss for what to say otherwise, and pushes her way out of the tent before anything else can happen.

His eyes follow her, though. She hasn’t known many tieflings in her life, and even having traveled with the circus for a good six months, she hasn’t gotten close enough to one to really get used to the blankness of their expressions. There must be something--something-- _human_ doesn’t really seem right, that’s sort of...species-est, she thinks ruefully. But there must be some emotion there.

No. No; if she’s honest, that’s not the issue. You can learn the peculiarities and differences in other species fairly easily; Yasha’s been talking to and getting along with dwarves and elves and halflings and yes, even tieflings, fairly well since she left Xhorhas. She’s not uncomfortable with _not_ being able to read emotion in them; she doesn’t feel entitled to that. What she’s uncomfortable with is what she _could_ see in his eyes. Terror unlike any she’d ever seen in a living being before. Just...straight from hell terror.

♡ ♡ ♡

“Well, we can’t keep just calling him _hey you_ ,” says Yasha, exasperated. _“Stop,”_ she adds to the tiefling, slapping his tail away. It’s a game he likes--how many times can I land the spade of my tail feather light against your leg before you realize I’m not a particularly bothersome fly?

“Why not?” asks one of the Knot sisters--Yasha’s still not sure which--sounding almost as exasperated as she is.

“Because people need names,” Yasha says. “They need names so you can yell at them when they’re being annoying.” _So they have a place to come back to, a home when they have no home,_ she thinks, but that thought gets shoved rapidly to the back of her mind. The voice sounds suspiciously like Zuala’s, and Yasha can’t handle her right now.

“Can’t argue with that,” mutters the other Knot sister.

♡ ♡ ♡

The book, as it turns out, is stolen-- _because of course it is_ \--and that makes it all the more precious. Yasha doesn’t exactly read it so much as she carries it proudly around with her, reveling in the thrill of having this stolen gift on her person at all times. Sometimes, though, on a solo hunting mission or on a watch shift, she gets bored and pulls it out.

It’s a classification guide to ocean life. Not particularly interesting...at least, not to her, not at the time...but the illustrations are lovely, and Yasha spends a good chunk of time running her fingers over the sketches, memorizing the names. There’s a whole section just for bivalves. The best part about that is all the colors, blooming to life across the page in a way that Yasha didn’t know could exist in nature. A good chunk of the book is, naturally, devoted to fully aquatic plants and animals, but near the back is a section for creatures that live on or around the water. She likes looking at the hermit crabs, especially the little cross-section that illustrates how they fit into their shells, but she keeps getting drawn back to the section at the very end of the book--the seabirds. There’s something about them that makes her feel oddly wistful. She can’t quite put a finger on it, but something indistinguishable aches in her chest like she’s missing someone she’s never met.

She runs through the names to herself sometimes on watch: puffin, gull, sandpiper, pelican. Albatross, frigate bird, cormorant, petrel, mollymawk. They’re such funny names, so unlike any word anyone in the tribe would use, that sometimes she wonders if Zuala is pranking her, making up random names and penciling them into the book.

It would be just like her.

Prank or not, the book provides endless quiet hours of fascination and comfort to Yasha, open or closed.

♡ ♡ ♡

“You know,” says Yasha casually, “it’s very hard to have a conversation with someone who doesn’t talk, but I’m sure we’ll think of something.”

She’s gotten used to talking out loud to the tiefling--she’s pretty sure he understands common at any rate, and it’s quite a bit better than talking to herself, which was starting to get annoyingly prevalent in recent months. He’s leaning against one of the tent poles, tail lashing lazily over the new grass, looking like someone trying entirely too hard to look cool. She resists the urge to laugh, not wanting to ruin the veneer of confidence he seems to have gathered in the past few weeks. This is the most aware of himself and his surroundings that she’s ever seen him--more often than not, he just sort of trails along behind her annoyingly close, looking like a lost puppy slipping into a dissociative state.

There’s not too much to do today besides hand out fliers, which Yasha usually skips out on anyway, but her body’s never quite gotten the message that “crack of dawn” does not have to be the time she gets up, so here she is, washing her face, dressing, rebraiding her hair, as though it actually matters. She catches the tiefling raising one eyebrow suggestively at her as she tugs her sleep shirt over her head, which actually does cause her to snort.

“You wish--you wish you were that lucky,” she says, unbothered. “The only reason you’re seeing this,” she says, waving vaguely at her currently bare chest, “is because I really don’t care.”

The tiefling tilts his head to one side, giving her a mock pleading look--the effect of him biting his lip being somewhat ruined by the fact that his fangs are poking out--and she rolls her eyes.

“But Yasha,” she says, affecting a slightly higher pitched, goofier tone, “what if I make this dumb face at you? What if i just wanted a kiss? How dare you assume whatever perverted thing I’m probably thinking.” Switching back to her regular voice, Yasha says, “Well, yes, I suppose that’s fair, I don’t really know you, but I also don’t really do sex things with strangers, and I’m afraid you fall into the category of stranger.”

She glances over at the tiefling, who has uncrossed his arms from his chest and shoved both hands in his pockets, and is watching her with a mixture of amusement and embarrassment. She finds herself flushing; she’d almost forgotten he was there, and she realizes she’s gesturing animatedly with the shirt balled up in her hand. She immediately starts folding it, feeling out of her element.

“Don’t act like you’re innocent,” she mumbles to the tiefling. “I _saw_ you checking out Bo’s ass. The first time. And also the next ten times. I’m not naive.”

The tiefling shrugs, throwing her a slightly sheepish “can you blame me?” kind of look.

“Well, the point is, you and Bo can get up to whatever you want on your own time, I don’t really care. The _point_ is--” she stops as the tiefling points at her and then spreads his hands in a question.

She sighs. “Don’t--what, you think I asked to share a tent with you?”

The tiefling repeats his shrug, making his eyes huge and innocent. Yasha interprets this to mean “didn’t you?”

“Gustav stuck you with me,” she says by way of answer. “I didn’t ask for this.” And then, because she doubts the wave of hurt that suddenly crosses his face is purely to do with sex, “Look, I don’t mind you being here. It’s just, uh.” She pauses to collect herself, taking the opportunity to tug her shirt over her head. “I’m not really...I don’t really do. That.” She waves a hand between herself and the tiefling, covering the gulf of space between them. “Not anymore at least.”

The tiefling nods slowly, as though he doesn’t entirely understand.

“Okay Yasha,” she says in her tiefling voice. “I promise to, uh, respect your boundaries and everything, because I know you’ll totally kill me very painfully if I don’t, because you’re very strong, and also to stop making that sad puppy face, because it’s making you so sad.”

The tiefling presses one hand to his mouth, probably to keep from laughing.

“Do we have a deal?” Yasha asks in her normal voice, and then says, “deal,” in the tiefling voice, as he nods. “Okay, glad we got that out of the way,” she says, as herself. The tiefling gives her a cheeky little two fingered salute, and she snorts.

♡ ♡ ♡

Okay, so, it’s not that she hates the bird, _exactly_.

It’s that she’s been walking for hours and she hasn’t eaten in days and when she looks at it, something deep inside her just, shatters.

It’s that she knows from a glance that it’s not going to make it. There’s blood matted in the finer, fluffier feathers at the joint where the wing meets the body, and it’s making a horrible screaming shriek sound with an odd musical undertone to it, beautiful even in its agony. It’s as though it’s literally unable to make any sound that isn’t some variant on its own song.

Yasha thinks about that for a moment too long, about things that exist in pain and things that are unable to be anything but themselves even in that pain, and how the noise will probably attract predators that will be much more successful in catching the thing and putting it out of its misery than she would be. And then she keeps walking, the pained screams ringing in her ears, aware that even this is a goodbye of a kind that Zuala never got to make.

♡ ♡ ♡

“Yasha?” Molly whispers.

“Mm. Sleeping.”

“Are you leaving soon?”

Yasha tries to play dead for a few more seconds, but Molly just slides onto the floor with her and pokes her in the stomach.

“ _Ow._ Molly…”

“That didn’t hurt,” he says, exasperated. “Are you going soon?”

Yasha blinks sleepily to full awareness to find Molly’s face inches from her own, eyes almost glowing, staring at her expectantly. She can hear Beau and Jester snoring, and beyond that--ah. The soft patter of rain at the window. The storm’s still going. She narrows her eyes at Molly.

“Wait, how did you even get in here? We locked the door.”

He grins. “You’re not the only one with secrets.”

“Ugh.” Yasha sits up, finally accepting that he’s not going to let her go back to sleep. “Yes. Yes, I’m--I’m leaving soon. It’s. You know.” She jerks a thumb at the window.

Something flashes through Molly’s eyes, but Yasha’s still not the greatest at reading tieflings. However, she does know Molly, and at any rate, the quiet, serious nod that he responds with is more than enough to confirm what she already knows.

“Not _forever_ ,” she assures him.

“I know not forever,” he snaps. “Sorry. It’s just. I fuckin’…” he laughs softly, causing Beau to stir in her sleep. “It’s uh, different. Without the circus.” He pulls her head to his without warning, briefly pressing their foreheads together and then kissing her on the cheek before pulling away and staring at the inn floor as though nothing had happened.

“I’m sorry, Molly. It’s just something I have to do, you know. It’s--well, I mean. You understand. You understand that more--more than anyone, I feel like.”

Molly gives her the barest of smirks. “Yeah, well. Doesn’t mean I have to like it. See you--when I see you. Love you.”

“Love you too,” Yasha echoes as he leaves, resisting the urge to tug at a corner of his coat, pull him back into the room and start a major tussle that will probably wake Beau and Jester.

There’s lightning in her bones. That’s the only way she can explain it to anyone; staying here would be wrong, unnatural even. She needs to _move_. She needs to be out there, in the rain and wind and damp and cold. She needs to feel the smallness of herself beside the hugeness of the storm.

Much as the restless that builds up inside her is uncomfortable, she wouldn’t trade it for anything in the world. She’s sure that it’s the only thing that could ever make her feel alive again, most days.

♡ ♡ ♡

“Oh,” says Yasha.

“Wow, _fuck_ ,” says Toya, who has just learned the word properly and has somehow managed to master the art of saying it in circumstances where everyone else is too busy with the current disaster to admonish her.

This certainly qualifies. The company of Fletching and Moondrop is, as a rule, used to games going quite wrong (they’re made up of too many people with a propensity for showing off who also happen to be mostly skilled at juggling to expect otherwise), but this is a game that doesn’t involve fire or acrobatics, or, honestly, any equipment at all. None of them exactly expected it to go this awry.

It had started, funnily enough, with Toya. After a fruitless half hour or so of trying to coax words out of the tiefling, the first time he came to any awareness, Gustav had given up in despair. Orna had even managed to produce a few scraps of paper and a pencil, but the tiefling hadn’t seemed to know what to do with them--or perhaps he was too weak. It was hard to tell, as Toya insisted on spoon feeding him soup, despite Gustav’s gentle protests to let him try on his own. After Gustav threw his hands up and walked off, though, Toya had become a veritable chatterbox.

“I don’t know why Gustav wants you to say all that boring stuff,” she said. “I mean, everyone knows their own name and stuff. I bet you’d talk if I could think of a cool enough word for you to say. Like...festival, maybe, or... _ornate_ , Kylre taught me that one.”

The tiefling sighed softly, seemingly content to let Toya run through a list of her favorite words. After about a minute or so, Bo had looked up from the walking stick he was whittling patterns into, and said, “try euphoria.”

“Oh, that’s a good one,” said Toya approvingly.

“Melancholy?” Yasha suggested flatly.

“I don’t think he likes that one,” said Toya. Yasha resisted the urge to say that they had yet to hear the tiefling speak at any of their suggestions.

Still, even without his participation, it became a game centering on the tiefling--and then Molly, once they’d given him his name. They would jump in and out of it with hardly a thought, which probably deeply confused any passersby.

“Chrysanthemum,” Yasha had tried. It was one of the few flower names she knew. “Eloquent. Absence. Ethereal.”

“Ornery,” Bo said, and then, “could you pass me the salt?”

Molly obliged without hardly looking, curled contentedly into Yasha’s side. He was definitely aware of their little game now, and sometimes Yasha thought that he was, in fact, capable of speech, and that he was keeping up their little game just to frustrate them.

“Unfathomable,” said one of the Knot sisters.

“What does that mean, Mona?” Toya asked. She always seems to know one from the other, and indeed asked this without even looking up from the crust of bread she was gnawing on, sprawled as she was on her back across their picnic blanket. Yasha spotted the smallest of smiles on Mona’s face.

“It means unable to be understood fully,” she said.

“That’s cool,” said Toya. “What’s ornery mean?”

“That guy,” Bo muttered, gesturing at Molly, who grinned lazily.

It was such a normal evening--should’ve been a normal evening--so when Kylre croaked gently, “empty,” from the other side of the blanket, it took a moment for them all to process when that normal evening slid away and was replaced with--this.

At first, Yasha didn’t even realize that it was part of the game; maybe Kylre wanted a new plate. (Maybe that was all it ever was, never intended to be part of the game to begin with.) But the effect upon Molly was immediate.

“Empty,” he whispered in a voice full of rust, almost as if he hadn’t meant to. Yasha jolted, startled, and for a moment they just stared at each other, him from down by her side, her from above, eyes wide and uncomprehending.

“No,” said Yasha. And then, “ _No_ ,” in a tone harsh enough that the rest of the party goes silent, all eyes locked on her and Molly. He scrambled upright, gaining about a foot and a half in height on her with her half kneeling on the ground, eyes never leaving her face.

“Nine,” he spit, his voice much clearer and louder than she’d ever heard it, even accounting those first desperate attempts, and then a look of shock and then horror watches over him and she watches his face crumple. “ _I don’t know why there’s fucking nine of them, Yasha--_ ” he said, and Yasha, who had just gotten the same sort of sinking feeling that she associated with yelling at someone who you find out five seconds later has just gotten divorced, stands up and fumbles for one of his hands, but he pushes her away, not ungently. _Nine of what?_ she desperately wants to ask, but she can tell that this couldn’t be a worse time.

“I--I don’t--I don’t remember--please don’t make me--” he gasps, and manages to stumble a short way away from their picnic before throwing up into the grass.

Prompting Yasha’s “oh” and Toya’s “fuck”.

“That’s not...good…” Yasha says softly, as though to herself. Molly’s trying to get up, lost in sobs, one arm wrapped around his stomach, but Yasha can tell he’s too weak to stand straight up on his own.

“Hey,” she says softly, and takes him by both shoulders to set him upright. “Hey. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to--you just--you reminded me of--I’m sorry.”

It’s weird--she’s never seen a tiefling cry before. His eyes can’t exactly go bloodshot, or at least not that she’s seen, but the skin around his eyes is certainly a darker purple, more like a bruise than anything else. He’s half choking, avoiding her gaze, and a hot stab of guilt penetrates somewhere in the region of her chest. “I’m sorry, Mollymauk,” she says again, and he wipes his mouth on the back of his wrist and coughs. She picks him up, surprised at how easy it is, and finds the rest of the party abruptly pretending that they hadn’t been staring at them. All except Toya, who is looking at Molly with huge, concerned eyes.

“I’m going to...I’m going to go put Mollymauk down,” she announces unnecessarily, and Toya runs after her , catching hold of the edge of her glove.

“Molly _talked_ ,” she stage whispers as Yasha sits him at the edge of his bedroll, kneeling next to him.

“He sure did,” says Yasha distractedly, reaching up to pat Molly’s shoulder. He’s holding his head in his hands, tears already quieting somewhat.

“Molly,” says Toya, quite visibly distressed now that she’s gotten over her initial excitement. “Molly, don’t be sad. Molly?”

Molly doesn’t respond, so Toya crawls up next to him on the bedroll and hugs him as much as she can from the side. “Molly…” She looks at Yasha, helpless. “Why is he sad? What happened?” she asks, clearly on the verge of tears herself.

“I don’t know,” Yasha says honestly. “I think maybe--I think maybe he remembered some things.”

At the word “remembered”, a sudden sob bursts out of him, and Yasha pulls both Molly and Toya closer to her, holding Molly’s head against her shoulder.

“Like from before us, you mean?” Toya asks quietly, leaning her head against Yasha’s arm.

“I think so. I don’t really know.”

♡ ♡ ♡

The dreams are persistent.

Yasha keeps waking in the middle of whatever field they’ve set up in, soaked to the skin, a scream boiling in her throat. _Fly,_ whispers the voice in the back of her head. _Fly fly fly_ , like a litany, but no matter how hard she tries, all that her wings seem to do is chill and darken the air around her before vanishing, leaving her frustrated and drenched.

“What do you _want_ from me?!” she screams finally, when they have three thunderstorms within two weeks, thoroughly raining out the circus and driving her and the rest of the troupe to other pursuits.

Immediately a bolt of lightning hits, far too close to the tents for comfort, close enough that the smell of ozone burns in Yasha’s nostrils, close enough that she worries, briefly, that the grass will catch fire.

And she runs. Towards it.

♡ ♡ ♡

“You know,” says Zuala conversationally, “you’re even pretty when you cry. I don’t know how you manage it.”

Yasha swats at Zuala’s hand, half hiccupping, half laughing. “ _Stop_ \--Zuala--I am not.”

“Are _too._ ” Zuala cups Yasha’s face in her hands, leaning their foreheads together till they’re a hair’s breadth away from kissing. “Please don’t worry yourself, sweetheart. I’ll be fine. _We’ll_ be fine. I’ll be back before you know it and no harm done.”

Yasha sniffles, still trying to conceptualize the idea of a Zuala-less _month_ in her head. “You promise?”

Zuala leans in, kisses her softer than she has any right to, and then pulls back enough to say, “I swear on my life.”

“A whole month,” Yasha laments. “A month is--is--”

“--more than fair for a troublemaker like me,” Zuala finishes reasonably, untangling Yasha’s hands from where they’re anxiously tangled in her lap and clasping them in her own. “And we,” she says, nodding down at their hands, “are invincible.”

“Forever and always,” Yasha murmurs, almost out of habit.

“Forever and always,” Zuala agrees.

♡ ♡ ♡

She never actually makes it to the ocean.

And, alright, in retrospect, it’s not the smartest idea? Yasha’s spent so much time wandering through the wilderness on her own, feeling entirely safe from the weather and mostly safe from the wild animals under the Stormlord, that she’s forgotten about...well, she’s forgotten about people.

Yasha is not good at people. This is a well established fact. She’s been very lucky to find the circus--people nto too overly concerned at your social skills, as long as you can contribute--and the Mighty Nein, who, of course, are not exactly the best at people either. But when it comes to situations in which she is required to either fight or socialize her way out of it, she seems to almost invariably pick the wrong one.

That’s what she’s thinking, as she feels the arrow bury itself in her chest. _I am really not very good at people. I probably should’ve picked something different._

They were just pickpockets, she was pretty sure. Or...or something. Highwaymen. Thieves. Grifters? She was pretty sure that was something different, but it didn’t matter at this point. She probably should have just let them see that she carried nothing of value--nothing of value to anyone who wasn’t her, anyway--instead of trying to carve through the first one that ambushed her with her broadsword.

For a second she can see the air clear through the haze of her rage and she thinks maybe--maybe she can fight through this? Maybe she’ll be okay?

And then she feels a strange nudge in her back, near her spine, and she realizes that the tip of the arrow has come out the other side of her, and she thinks--oh. Okay.

So probably no more fighting, then.

It is, almost definitely, the stupidest way she could’ve died.

♡ ♡ ♡

She doesn’t remember being freed from her chains--on either occasion. All she remembers is the blankness that came afterwards, merciful and swift. She remembers staring down at the raw skin around her wrists and rubbing at it until Jester reached out, alarmed, and caught her hand. She remembers having to take a second to process that it was, in fact, alarm, and that Jester wanted to prevent her from hurting herself further. It took her an even longer moment to recall _why_ anyone would want her not to hurt herself.

She allows Jester to take her hands out of her lap somewhat reluctantly.

“Maybe hold on to something?” Jester whispers, and presses a stone into her hand; a river polished piece of quartz. “It’s from Nott,” Jester says, and then turns away as though she’s already said too much. Yasha just nods, tosses the stone lightly from hand to hand, wondering if it will really quell the burning in her wrists. The cart rattles on, closer and closer to Molly’s grave.

♡ ♡ ♡

None of it makes sense to her. The dreams, the lightning, the weird feeling she gets whenever it rains, that instinctive feeling of healing that settled beneath her skin when she woke up on Kord’s altar. It’s frustrating, usually, but sometimes some part of her takes comfort in that there is still something here to be figured out. There is still something here to be figured out, for her personally, and it’s been set before her by a god, no less.

Yasha’s never exactly had a father, but even the cryptic protection and challenges of the Stormlord more than make up for that hole sunk into her. She suspects that maybe if her childhood had been kinder or her transition to adulthood smoother, it would have left a bigger gap, a bigger space to be filled inside of her, but as it is, the smallest of reassurances are enough to sustain her for months.

It sends her into overdrive searching for answers, then, when she gets much more than small reassurances. Her dreams are driving at something, almost...almost _stabbing_ at it, placing her on clifftops and in barren graveyards, among packs of wild animals that she has no name for hunting down even bigger packs that she cannot name either, watching them tearing each other to shreds. She’s shackled, always shackled, the metal holding fast around her wrists and ankles with more certainty than the Iron Shepherds had ever instilled in her, even at the worst moments.

She wakes up stifling shouts, not out of fear but out of building rage, her body gearing up to fight whatever will next be put in front of her and finding--nothing.

The dreams come to a head the night she leaves the Mighty Nein after Molly’s death, culminating with her “waking up” in what she can only assume to be a cave with a sandy floor, the surrounding area so dark that she can hardly make out the other two shapes in the room--one of them winged, the other taller than any being Yasha has met before. They stand unmoving, facing the only wall in the cave through which she can see a tiny crack of light.

 _LOSS,_ growls the Stormlord, and just that voice alone is enough to drop Yasha to her knees.

_LOSS IS EXCRUCIATING._

She’s sure--almost sure--she’s heard this particular speech before. It feels like the kind of knowledge that only comes in a dream, the kind of thing you can only remember when you’re asleep. And if she thinks back hard enough, she can almost remember--hearing this. In all the other dreams.

_LOSS IS PARALYZING._

She’s definitely heard this before. It’s like staring at a book and trying to read it but your eyes won’t focus on the words.

_LOSS IS INEVITABLE._

And maybe the words are in a different language. Maybe they’re written backwards and you just have to hold the page up to a mirror.

_LOSS CAN BRING SORROW._

She’d had a book like that. Once.

_BRING HATE._

It had been a gift--a wedding gift, actually. From Zuala, the only other attendee.

 _BRING CRUELTY AND DARKNESS_.

And that...is when it clicks.

♡ ♡ ♡

“Oh,” says a rather small voice that Yasha’s never heard before. “Oh dear. This is--well.”

The pain in her chest really just should not be allowed. Yasha grits her teeth, going to prop herself up on her elbow, but her arm gives out and her head--slams into a pillow, not the packed dirt of the road to Nicodranas.

“Ow,” she says anyway, because it’s not as though everything else hurts any less. And then, “What?”

“Um. Hello.” The small voice takes a deep breath, and then Yasha feels a small hand accompanying it, resting lightly at her elbow. “My name is Pike Trickfoot. I’m a cleric of Sarenrae. And I don’t mean to alarm you, but you did just die, so I would be a little more careful about getting up if I were you. Maybe don’t do it. For a while, at least.”

“Where--?” Yasha manages. Her throat feels paper dry.

“You’re still in Nicodranas, don’t worry. I didn’t take you far. We’re at an inn. It’s very lucky that my crew came into port when they did. Or, well, maybe not lucky. I don’t think it’s lucky.”

“You...don’t?” Yasha asks, somewhat bewildered.

“Oh--sorry, that probably didn’t sound very good. What I meant is, I think it was fate, not luck. I’m pretty sure Sarenrae wanted me to find you. I’ve been having dreams…”

Yasha opens her eyes at last to see a gnome woman anxiously finger combing her hair, which is shockingly white. Occasionally her fingers dart up to clutch at the holy symbol around her neck and then wander back to her hair, soothed.

“Hello,” she says, very belatedly.

Pike smiles, and her eyes almost glitter. “Hi.”

“I’m Yasha,” she says. “Uh, Yasha...of the Mighty Nein. I guess.”

“And I’m still Pike,” Pike says brightly. “Of Vox Machina, although I’m a little bit more sure about that one.”

Yasha barks out a half laugh that seizes up her whole chest. “Yeah I, uh. I don’t know if I should go back. I thought maybe--maybe I had a job out here, but I don’t. I don’t know anymore.”

“A job?” Pike asks curiously. “Like--a money job, or more of a thing-you-really-have-to-do job?”

“The second thing,” says Yasha. “I’m not really too big on money. It doesn’t make a lot of sense to me, to be honest.”

Pike stops fidgeting to rest her chin in her hand. “Well, I’m sure your friends will still be there when you’re done with your job, if they really are your friends.” She considers this for a minute. “Not necessarily in the exact same place though. But I’m sure they--oh, you know what I mean.”

“I think so,” says Yasha, head still spinning. “I’m sure they’d be very kind to me, but...well, I’m not sure I deserve to go back yet. Or that I want to.”

There’s a short silence. Pike’s studying her with an intensity that makes her want to turn her face away, but she manages to hold the gaze.

“Well,” she says finally, “if you do decide to go back, I’m sure they’d be happy to have you.”

She stands abruptly and starts to walk towards the door. “I’m going to go get us some dinner.”

Before Yasha can respond, the door is closing.

♡ ♡ ♡

“It’s a good name,” Molly tells her, voice raw. “A good name for what I’m sure was a very good person.”

“She was everything,” Yasha says. “She was just--everything. I don’t know.”

She rolls over, disentangling herself from Molly, and he’s so quiet for such a long time that she thinks he’s fallen asleep.

“I’m sorry I keep coming in here,” he says, ages later, and Yasha snorts.

“Where else would you go?” she asks, and the question, spoken into the dark on the other side of her bedroll, sounds much harsher than she intended it to be. Molly doesn’t answer. He doesn’t need to.

♡ ♡ ♡

They didn’t really talk about kids, Yasha and Zuala. It was too much of a fantasy, even for them. Yasha had never even though if it was something she wanted--they simply never got that far. But sometimes--sometimes.

Sometimes Yasha would watch the tribe children flock around Zuala like so many birds, clinging to her legs and shrieking for stories and hanging off her arms, and the grin on her face was almost too much to look at. Sometimes Yasha had to look away from it, like she’d been staring into a fire for too long. Sometimes Zuala would catch her eye and Yasha would have to watch as her own cautious skepticism melted into Zuala’s face in the form of sadness and resignation, and Yasha always wanted to call it back, like her unspoken words were an animal she’d set free.

Zuala didn’t deserve this. Didn’t deserve her timidity, her lack of faith in the future. Crazy as it might be, she deserved someone exactly as brave as her, exactly as strong, someone who would act as a support to her dreams and not a sink.

Eventually Yasha stops watching. Zuala shouldn’t have her own private happiness ruined by the only person she trusted enough to share it with.

♡ ♡ ♡

It’s supposed to be her in the grave.

Zuala had _purpose. Drive._ Even Molly, directionless and shifting as the wind, stole a fierce joy from every moment of his existence. He _liked_ being alive, purposeless or not. Yasha’s never really known what she was doing or who she was--only that she wanted to be near these people, to further their lives, to protect them.

Yasha’s always been a bodyguard, whether in the literal sense or the figurative. All she’s done is protect, whether that protection be of ideals and dreams or of people.

Her use has run out. She has nothing left to protect.

It should be her in that grave, but it isn’t.


End file.
